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The Best in Action SportsSat, 01 Aug 2015 15:09:37 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.37 Days of Seriously Sick Edits!http://mpora.com/articles/7-days-of-seriously-sick-edits
http://mpora.com/articles/7-days-of-seriously-sick-edits#commentsFri, 04 Apr 2014 16:05:44 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=8874[splitpost intro=”true” order=”reverse”] It’s that time of the week again when we get to pore over Mpora in all its glory and bring you the raddest edits from the week gone by. So with the weekend finally in reach, sit back and watch seven of the best edits to reach our screens this week.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/7-days-of-seriously-sick-edits/feed10 Unique and Wonderfully Weird Skiing Eventshttp://mpora.com/articles/10-unusual-unique-and-wonderfully-weird-skiing-events
http://mpora.com/articles/10-unusual-unique-and-wonderfully-weird-skiing-events#commentsMon, 23 Dec 2013 12:00:21 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=3361[splitpost intro=”true”] If you’re a seasoned pro endurance skier, or merely someone who yawns at the prospect of a bog standard skiing holiday, these events are for you. Covering the bizarre to the down right hard-core, here are 10 skiing events that we reckon are well worth a look in 2014.

If you’re a seasoned pro endurance skier, or merely someone who yawns at the prospect of a bog standard skiing holiday, these events are for you. Covering the bizarre to the down right hard-core, here are 10 skiing events that we reckon are well worth a look in 2014.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/10-unusual-unique-and-wonderfully-weird-skiing-events/feedGoing For Gold: 6 Inspirational Sochi Storieshttp://mpora.com/articles/inspirational-sochi-stories
http://mpora.com/articles/inspirational-sochi-stories#commentsFri, 13 Dec 2013 10:39:36 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=3166[splitpost intro=”true” position=”below”] It’s long been the case that countries hosting large international events will come under a fair amount of strife, and really events don’t get much bigger than the Olympics. Google Sochi and your screen will swiftly fill up with startling headlines about protest zones, spies and journalists being arrested, leaving you thinking […]

It’s long been the case that countries hosting large international events will come under a fair amount of strife, and really events don’t get much bigger than the Olympics. Google Sochi and your screen will swiftly fill up with startling headlines about protest zones, spies and journalists being arrested, leaving you thinking that you’d mistakenly run a search on the history of Russian conflict.

The main offender of this contention has been the highly controversial law Russia passed over the summer banning gay ‘propaganda’. Both Olympic countries and individual athletes have voiced strong opinions over the issue, while it’s also attracted opinions from the wider media.

Lady Gaga made her view on the matter very clear whilst being interviewed by Alan Carr. “I don’t think that we should be going to the Olympics at all,” she stated before urging Tom Daley not to compete: “I hate saying that, because I’m so excited for those like Tom Daley to go and to win and to rejoice”. This is perhaps when Alan Carr should have interrupted and pointed out that diving isn’t actually in the Winter Olympics.

But putting politics aside for a moment, we’ve decided to turn our attention to the athletes. As the qualifying cut off is getting increasingly closer it is throwing up some pretty interesting stories, so here are a few of them to whet your Olympic appetite.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/inspirational-sochi-stories/feed12 of the Best Ski and Snowboard Resorts for Beginnershttp://mpora.com/articles/best-ski-and-snowboard-resorts-for-beginners
http://mpora.com/articles/best-ski-and-snowboard-resorts-for-beginners#commentsThu, 12 Dec 2013 10:00:52 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=3106[splitpost intro=”true”] To be a first timer without a clue in the world where to discover your snow legs can be a pretty daunting experience. While it’s unlikely that you’ll accidentally book yourself in for a week on the face of Vallee Blanche, with so many resorts throughout the world to choose from, there’s a […]

To be a first timer without a clue in the world where to discover your snow legs can be a pretty daunting experience. While it’s unlikely that you’ll accidentally book yourself in for a week on the face of Vallee Blanche, with so many resorts throughout the world to choose from, there’s a lot of pre holiday reading to plough through to narrow your choices down.

To simplify matters for you, here’s our quick guide to the best resorts for beginners.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/best-ski-and-snowboard-resorts-for-beginners/feed10 Things You Need to Know Before You Hit the Slopeshttp://mpora.com/articles/10-things-you-need-to-know-before-you-hit-the-slopes
http://mpora.com/articles/10-things-you-need-to-know-before-you-hit-the-slopes#commentsThu, 05 Dec 2013 15:10:12 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=2729[splitpost intro=”true” numbers=”true”] For the uninitiated, a snow holiday can be quite a daunting experience. Not only have you got to master a new sport whilst donning completely alien equipment, you’ll most likely be in a foreign environment where you might not even speak the language. But despite the unfamiliarities, you’ll be hard pushed to […]

]]>[splitpost intro=”true” numbers=”true”] For the uninitiated, a snow holiday can be quite a daunting experience. Not only have you got to master a new sport whilst donning completely alien equipment, you’ll most likely be in a foreign environment where you might not even speak the language.

But despite the unfamiliarities, you’ll be hard pushed to find a funner holiday and we couldn’t recommend a trip to the mountains more.

To help you along if you’re heading out on your first snow holiday, here are 10 things you should take note of before you hit those slopes.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/10-things-you-need-to-know-before-you-hit-the-slopes/feedJamie Nicholls Wins Big Bucks at Freeze Festival 2013http://mpora.com/articles/nicholls-wins-big-bucks-at-freeze-festival-2013
http://mpora.com/articles/nicholls-wins-big-bucks-at-freeze-festival-2013#commentsTue, 03 Dec 2013 18:38:23 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=2645Separated from its birthplace beneath the iconic towers of Battersea Power Station, this year Freeze sprung up on the pleasant pastures of Clapham Common for a (slightly less) urban fix of music, rail jams, après and ever eccentric mountain wear flaunting. Dubbed a music, ski and snowboard festival, Freeze set out to offer anything and […]

]]>Separated from its birthplace beneath the iconic towers of Battersea Power Station, this year Freeze sprung up on the pleasant pastures of Clapham Common for a (slightly less) urban fix of music, rail jams, après and ever eccentric mountain wear flaunting.

The new ‘Hail the Rail’ setup for 2013

Dubbed a music, ski and snowboard festival, Freeze set out to offer anything and everything you might encounter in a mountain resort, and with a whole host of mountain bars ready to plunge you into the midst of a heavy après session, drunken debauchery was definitely on the cards. One unsuspecting look into the Krazy Kangaroo, a famous Austrian hangout, saw us flung into the world’s most unflattering onesies, made to dance like lunatics to the cheesiest sounds of the 80s and partake in a brief, but nonetheless awkward, game of twister.

The Metro Lodge Photo: Mike Brindley

80s throwback session in the Krazy Kangaroo

Dressing up has long been a festival favourite of Freeze goers and this year was obviously no different. If onesies didn’t quite cut the mustard, eager fans could further their fancy dress fix by helping to set a new Guinness World Record for the ‘most Christmas jumpers in one place at one time’… admittedly not ground breaking stuff, but a record none the less.

Even the riders were jumping on the fancy dress bandwagon this year, with Len Jorgensen and Kas Lemmens donning themselves as Batman and the Joker in the international rail jam. Unfortunately any similarities between Len Jorgensen and Batman stopped at his face as a particularly heavy slam to the head forced his session short and saw him whisked away by the medics.

Couple of jokers: Len Jorgensen & Kas Lemmens Photo: Mike Brindley

Kas Lemmens’ manic grin became a tad sinister after a while Photo: Mike Brindley

Although the après bars had been pumping out sets all week, the main stage was only in full flow on the Saturday. Following on from the likes of the Cuban Brothers, Flyte and a magic mix of DJ Fresh & Messy MC, it was French electro phenomenon Madeon who hyped up an already euphoric crowd to round up the Saturday night.

Madeon closing the main stage on a high

Saturday was also when the real snow action started. While the imposing 32 meter kicker that had become synonymous with Freeze was absent, there was still enough to get excited about on the snow front. Both the Battle of Britain and the International Rail Jam proved worthy enough competitions to attract a host of world class riders, although that was no doubt helped along by the £12,000 prize purse.

Hail the Rail pulling in the crowds Photo: Mike Brindly

The cream of British talent kicked off the riding in the Battle of Britain, which saw Mikey Rowlands top the podium in skiing and the man of ultimate steeze Andy Nudds in snowboarding.

When the turn came for the invited international riders to take to the rails the ante was upped from the off. While Finnish rider Juho Kilkki was all over the skiing title, in snowboarding it was a more closely fought battle. Although Russia’s Denis Leontyev put up a good fight, it was the UK’s Jamie Nicholls who managed to come out on top in the end.

Jamie Nicholls on his way to making the top of the podium Photo: Mike Brindly

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/nicholls-wins-big-bucks-at-freeze-festival-2013/feedLife Just Got a Bit Simpler on Mporahttp://mpora.com/articles/life-just-got-a-bit-simpler-on-mpora
http://mpora.com/articles/life-just-got-a-bit-simpler-on-mpora#commentsWed, 28 Nov 2012 14:46:28 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=993As soon as Dropbox announced the release of the ‘Dropbox Chooser’ our team of tech lovers transformed into a haze of activity and set about to deliver something that will make your life a little bit simpler. What is this cool new feature I hear you cry? Well in a nutshell it’s just made getting […]

]]>As soon as Dropbox announced the release of the ‘Dropbox Chooser’ our team of tech lovers transformed into a haze of activity and set about to deliver something that will make your life a little bit simpler. What is this cool new feature I hear you cry? Well in a nutshell it’s just made getting your edits out into the action sports world a whole lot easier.

Here at Mpora HQ we understand the efforts that you go through to get your content online. You’ve hooned around nailing your best tricks, before painstakingly combing through hours of footage to piece together a video masterpiece, so we get that what follows needs to be kept as simple as possible. Well thanks to this handy new feature it’s good news for all you Dropbox users.

As a result of its recent integration into Mpora, next time you go to upload a video you can now simply select video files straight from your Dropbox folder. All in all it means Dropbox users won’t have to download onto a local hard disk before uploading, you’ll always have the latest version on hand and you can access and upload your content anywhere on the fly!

Sounds good right? Well here’s how to get rolling with it…

The diagram above pretty much shows all you need to know, but if you want it spelling out for you here it goes. If you’re a dropbox user, next time you go to upload a new video on Mpora instead of selecting ‘Choose’ hit ‘Choose from Dropbox’, which will then take you through to your Dropbox folder where you can select the file of your choice. Yes, it really is as simple as that!

For those that know little to nothing about cliff diving, then think Olympic diving but with a rather extreme twist. While most diving takes place on a 3 or 10 metre board, cliff diving throws everything else out the park and claims a massive 27 meter high launching pad! This insane distance gives the divers a hell of a lot of space to play with before they hit the water at a hurtling speed, so you can see where that extreme element comes in. With the 2012 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series just finished we thought we’d catch up with now 2x world series winner Gary Hunt – judging by how tricky it was to track him down, this guy is hot property at the moment!

Going back to the beginning, how did you get into cliff diving in the first place?

First off I was a swimmer and I used to watch the divers in the other pool and I thought that they looked like they were having more fun so I changed over to diving when I was about nine and then just gradually got used to it and went higher and higher. After I got used to diving from the 10 metre board I got a bit lucky, I was at the European Championships and after that event I had a month off and while I was there my coach got a call from an ex diver saying that they needed a diver for one month to do a diving show in Italy. My coach came to me because he knew that I was a diver that liked to play around with different weird moves and stuff and so I jumped at the chance and did that show for a month where I could go up to 18 metres and I met an Australian cliff diver Steve Black who acted as my coach, like when the theme park closed I would train and he would give me tips and he saw that I was learning very fast so he said that he would put me down for competitions the following year, which was in 2007.

Did you think that you would stay in normal Olympic diving or did you always have a head for the more extreme dives?

That was the goal at the start. I was training with the other divers towards the Olympics but I used to watch the cliff diving on TV with my friend and I always used to think it would be really cool to do that, but I didn’t really know how to get into it. It didn’t seem that there was a clear path to make the transition, I just kept on going and kept on training towards the olympics, but then just got lucky and happened to do a show with a cliff diver.

As a cliff diver is there a strict training regime that you have to stick to?

We don’t really have a coach for cliff diving, we’re coached right the way up through our diving career but then when you go to cliff diving competitions you have to just be self motivated. There’s not one person that’s telling you that you need to train this dive this many times, you just have to decide for yourself what you need to do and what direction you need to go in, and so it’s just a matter of being on the ball and staying motivated.

Is there a UK scene that you dive with to keep you motivated?

At the moment I’m living mostly in France, I do a show from April until November in France and so when I train it’s mostly in Paris. When I train it’s only from the 10 metre board – the only time I ever do 27 metres is at a competition. The dives I do in competition I actually split them up into two and train them both individually from the 10 metre, when I go to the competition I put the two together.

How do you go about creating and practising new dives?

It’s kind of a natural progression, when you’re training for the 10 metre diving you do all the different groups – the forward, backward, inward, reverse and the twists and arm stands, and so you learn what are your strong points. It’s just a matter of finding what you do best and pushing those groups into the most difficult combinations of summersaults and twists as possible. When you get comfortable with a dive you think would it be easier to add a summersault or would it be easier to add a twist and things like that. It’s just about deciding what dive is best for you.

I’ve read recently that you were the first high diver to introduce the running take off. What inspired you to make that decision?

That was actually an idea of my best friend who was actually killed in a car accident years ago and it was with him, Gavin Brown, that I used to watch high diving videos. We used to talk about the possibility of us joining the sport and he always used to say I want to be the first person to introduce the running take off, and so after I got into the sport that was always on my mind so I just thought why not? Why not try it and dedicate it to my friend, so that was the main inspiration behind it.

Were you pretty nervous before you tried that?

Yeah, definitely the most nervous I’ve been because it just added an extra fear factor, not being able to see over the edge before you take off and just going for it, hoping that it goes well.

And did that first time go as you’d hoped?

Yeah the first time I did it it went well, there was no problem and so I decided that I was going to use that dive in the competition. But unfortunately during that competition there was much bigger waves and I didn’t account for that and so I didn’t quite rotate fast enough and hit the wave at an awkward angle and got concussion from it. Everything was ok, but I did have to go to hospital and get checked out for any injuries, but it turned out alright.

Is cliff diving considered to be quite a heavy risk sport? Do you see lots of injuries in it?

I think any experienced cliff diver has one or two stories of times where they’ve been injured. Normally you can get back up onto the board after a week or two. Very occasionally you do get some more serious injuries but it doesn’t happen that often. The most important thing is to not let it affect you because I’ve seen divers who have a bad accident and then afterwards they really struggle to get back to where they were because in their mind they know how it can really hurt.

What’s been your worst injury you’ve encountered in your career?

Diving related would be the time that I competed the running take off. I’ve had bumps and bruises from other dives but that’s the only time I’ve had to go to hospital and taken me a couple of weeks to really get over it. At all the competitions we have a big safety team and there’s always scuba divers in the water ready to pick us out because you can get knocked out pretty easily.

What would you say is your favourite dive?

I would say that it’s probably my forward four summersaults with one and a half twists.

Would that be your weapon you’d use in competition?

No, that’s more the dive that I enjoy doing. It’s a difficult dive, but it’s not a dive that I’d find scary, it’s a dive that I know I can do well in lots of situations even if I’m not feeling 100%. I can still do it and even under pressure I can do it well, but it wouldn’t be my biggest weapon. That would be my other difficult dive, my back triple with four twists, because it’s got the highest degree of difficulty in the world so if I do it well it’s really hard for the others to compete.

Who’s your closest competitor out there in the field?

At the moment it’s Orlando Duque, 9 x world champion, he’s just so consistent, he very rarely does bad dives and you know that if you mess up one of your dives he’s going to be right on your heels. You almost can’t make a mistake when you’re diving against him. You know he’s more than likely not going to make a mistake.

Watching the Red Bull Cliff Diving Series it looks like you guys went to some pretty cool locations. Did you have a favourite spot?

I think from this year it would be the final in Oman, such good weather and just the scenery was incredible. Diving from a rock face and then having a rock face right in front of you as well it was just stunning.

What are your plans now for the future?

Well my imminent plans are training for a dive. I want to start doing a handstand dive and it’s been a while since I’ve done any difficult dives with a handstand take off, so I’m going to need to go back and make sure that my handstands are in good form. Sometimes you have to do a handstand in very windy weather or rain, so it needs to be absolutely 100%. Also to just try and stay in shape and keep up with the rising level of the sport.

Do you think the sport can go much further in terms of technical difficulty?

Yes, I think it’s got a long way to go. Just seeing the progression in the last four years, since we’ve had the Red Bull World Series, it’s really come along way because you’ve got more divers coming in with new ideas and you’re getting new dives, and harder and harder dives every year. With 27 metres you’ve got so much room to play with, so I think it’s got a long way to go.

Do you think that with Red Bull’s involvement and the fact that Dave TV are covering it, that cliff diving is moving more into the mainstream audience?

It’s all been happening in the last couple of years and it’s culminated with the 27 metre diving being introduced in the world championships next year, which formally was just a 3 metre and 10 metre event, all the olympic committee will come to watch the event and so this is the first step towards becoming an Olympic sport.

What for you has been your stand out moment in your career so far?

Difficult… I think this win has been one of the best moments because it really did feel like the hardest competition I’ve ever done. The previous years I’ve managed to secure the title almost before the last event so to have been in a situation where I’m really down to the wire was really tense.

Did you party hard afterwards to celebrate?

Well we were in Oman where alcohol is highly forbidden or hidden, so it was very discreet compared with the other places, but we definitely had a good celebration.

Have you got any tips or advice for people looking into cliff diving and how they’d get into it?

The best tip is to just go down to your diving pool, none of the cliff divers just went up onto a cliff and tried it, you have to have good experience in diving, so just go to your diving pool and play around with many dives, some that your coach might not ask you to do. You’ll soon get a good sense of spacial awareness and work your way up slowly.

If you want to watch Gary in action along with the best moments from the 2012 Red Bull Cliff Diving Series then have a flick through these assortment of videos we’ve put together for you and don’t forget you can catch the Cliff Diving Series on Dave on Sundays at 5pm.

]]>http://mpora.com/articles/gary-hunt-interview/feedMPORA ON XBOX LIVE!http://mpora.com/articles/mpora-on-xbox-live
http://mpora.com/articles/mpora-on-xbox-live#commentsThu, 18 Oct 2012 08:55:01 +0000http://mpora.com/articles/?p=874Thanks to the recent Xbox Live update you lucky Xbox users can now browse Internet Explorer from the comfort of your TV, leaving you free to indulge in the web at your leisure on an actual decent sized screen. Why are we telling you this I hear you wonder. Well because thanks to our shiny […]

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Thanks to the recent Xbox Live update you lucky Xbox users can now browse Internet Explorer from the comfort of your TV, leaving you free to indulge in the web at your leisure on an actual decent sized screen. Why are we telling you this I hear you wonder. Well because thanks to our shiny new and improved Mpora player, Mpora videos seem to work like a dream on Xbox Live. So gone are the days of getting all your mates to cram around your tiny laptop for that latest sick edit, you can now get your daily fill of the best of action sports in full HD and full screen mode straight from your massive flat screen TV. Pretty cool hey?